16: Interviews

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While my sister, with the help of Glath and Derek, interviewed the aljik, I had a shyr to deal with.

Loathe as I was to leave the boys, I wasn’t taking either of them back onto my ship while the shyr was still a threat. I left Keith with the others and headed back by myself.

It would be so, so easy to just leave the shyr to die. Safer, too, probably. Every time I saw the metal on the side of Derek’s head, I considered it. But then I’d meet my sons’ eyes and realise that I couldn’t do that. What kind of an example would I be setting, killing helpless prisoners just because I hated them, and I could? Despite everything, Kate and the boys had found a way to take this shyr’s ship without killing her. What kind of a mother would I be if I refused to meet their standard?

I was going to have to find some way to talk this shyr into not being a threat. And I had absolutely no idea how I was going to do that.

I wasn’t worried. I’d talked my way through tougher situations.

———————–

“Ain, huh? My name’s Kate. So what do you think of Queen Tatik and the rogue Princess? As a dohl, what sorts of things do you do?”

———————–

I’d expected to be left to die. I was halfway through figuring out how to physically disassemble the depowered airlock without causing a very sudden and explosive decompression so that I could exit the gun and leap for the ship. (I’ve made more difficult space leaps. You can’t always risk something as big as a docking pod, which can easily be noticed on scan or camera by even a busy crew in a disaster situation, when secretly boarding a hostile vessel.) The gun wasn’t supposed to be entered except by maintenance crews and didn’t have manual safeties on the exit like a ship’s airlock should, so safely exiting without electricity was a real conundrum.

I could probably have managed it in time, though. Probably. There was a chance I could’ve gotten out of the gun and leapt for the Oval Nine and found a way to mask the activity of one of the ship’s airlocks to sneak back in, somehow, before I ran out of air or before the ship was too far away for even me to make the leap.

So there was no need to panic. No need to panic. Getting out of difficult scrapes was my speciality. I could do it.

Anyway, I was making good progress on figuring out how when the question became irrelevant. The inertial frame changed as everything jolted to one side, pressing me against a wall momentarily, before setting me back in zero gravity. I’m extensively experienced in space manoeuvres, and even without external cameras, knew exactly what was happening; I was being towed. The Oval Nine (judging by the direction) had tethered the gun and pulled it back towards the ship, and I was drifting back towards them, fairly slowly to avoid any dangerous collision.

There probably would be some collision, though. I made some quick estimates on distance and velocity, and braced myself.

——————–

“Captain Sil. We do apologise for all we’ve put you and your crew through. I just have a few questions – no, no, I’m not interested in military secrets. They’re more questions about your job in general. What, exactly, does your ship patrol for? I know you’ve got one planet under quarantine; are there any others? What sort of trade do you police, and why?”

——————-

Kit welcomed me back aboard my ship with some relief. “Retracting the gun is going well, my Queen. How do you plan to convert her? Shyr can be difficult.”

“I know. I don’t know a whole lot about how shyr think, which certainly doesn’t help. I can only really judge what a human behaving like this is like, and strategise accordingly. And that’s probably not going to be accurate.”

“This is very dangerous.”

“I know that.”

“Shyr are very good at deception.”

“I know that, too.” We started to make our way towards the bridge. “Is this a bad idea, Kit? Should I just kill her?”

“I’m not a tahl; I — ”

“I’m interested in your opinion. I already know that any tahl would tell me to kill her, the same as you did to any assailants of the Stardancer.”

“And you’re the one who pointed out the futility of allowing them to live, remember?”

I did. There was utility (and basic decency) in letting enemies live, in not forcing them into a position where fighting to the death was their best option. But none of those enemies had been a threat to my kids.

“Allowing them to live wasn’t all that much of a risk. What do you think?”

“The risk is much greater. The potential utility is also much greater. If we had a shyr on our side, that would greatly increase our options.”

He was right. Both her abilities and her information could be so useful. And were such a threat.

“Out of curiosity, what would a human behaving like her be like?”

“Someone who’s used to winning, who’s lost to a stranger, and is throwing a tantrum because her pride was hurt. She was on board enough with Tatik’s plan to go and abduct my family, but they get the best of her one time and suddenly humans are so dangerous that it’s worth trying to provoke me to attack the Empire in order to convince Tatik to keep us away forever. That’s not a logical response to losing control of one spaceship to a lab technician and two children. For a human in this situation, the answer would be to appeal to her pride and competence, and make her feel smart for realising that she can use us to save the Empire.”

Kit looked puzzled. Unsurprising; our shared language didn’t have all the words I’d used in it, and Glath wasn’t around to translate the English ones. But he just said, “And how will you do that?”

“No clue. Not a fucking clue.”

————————-

“So as a kel, you do a lot of ship maintenance and emergency system patching… what about coding? Interesting. Okay, here’s a tricky question – imagine you were born a long, long time ago, in a nest before the aljik had discovered space travel. What sorts of things would be your job then, do you think?”

————————

I felt the momentum changes as the gun was pulled back into place against the ship and bolted back on. And then, the reactivation of the gun. The lights on the service airlock.

Electricity.

I waited, on high alert, for several minutes, but nobody tried to come in. They were waiting for me to come out, of course; why walk into an unknown situation and risk death at my hands when it would be safer to simply sait for me to do that instead? My choices were to slowly suffocate inside, or to come out. All they had to do was wait.

I climbed out. There was nobody to meet me. The ship had been turned so that it was impossible to aim the huge gun at the Red Four again, which wasn’t surprising. The repaired support arms were weak and inexpertly done; I briefly considered removing the gun again, just out of spite, but there was no point. If I could gain control of this ship, I’d be depriving myself of a weapon. If I couldn’t, it was still better to leave the humans as armed as possible; I wanted them to demonstrate that they were a threat to Tatik, why would I deprive them of the means to do that?

I left the gun alone. I was on limited air, anyway; I shouldn’t waste time.

———————————

“Your Queens seem pretty active. Is it normal for Queens to leave the nest this much? How many eggs do they usually lay?”

———————————

“She’s exited the gun,” Kit reported.

“So she’s on the hull? Can we track her out there?”

“Partially. It depends on whether she’s going to make an effort to avoid our cameras or not. She’s snuck aboard once before.”

“Indeed she has. But this time, we’re ready.”

———————————-

“Okay, Captain Sil, maybe you can help clear something up for me. I’m told that the rogue Princess’ ship, the Stardancer, was a stolen prison ship for housing alien prisoners. And you police trade routes to enforce the Empire’s justice. I understand that, but I don’t really understand how imprisonment fits into your whole justice system. How does one go about arresting an alien… and why? Do you imprison dangerous or noncompliant aljik within the nest?”

———————————–

The lights of the nearest airlock glowed in front of me. That would be where they expected me to enter the ship. In theory, I could crawl along the hull, avoiding cameras, and surprise them by entering through a different airlock, But they would certainly be on the lookout for that. They didn’t want me dead, or I’d be dead already; until I knew what they did want, it wasn’t a good idea to unnecessarily complicate the situation.

I headed for the airlock.

————————————

“So when Queens leave to make new nests, how far do they fly? And, this is important, do they pass through the territories of other nests to find somewhere to settle? Because that would – okay, yes, that is more dangerous, but I’m thinking in terms of ahlda travellers. Ahlda wouldn’t want to settle in the nests of their sisters, right? Just, genetically. You don’t know? Is there anybody on this ship who might?”

———————————

We’d taken every precaution against the shyr that we could. Knowing that she’d snuck into our ship once before, every airlock on the ship had their inner doors physically barred closed from the inside. The escape pods had their engines temporarily disconnects; nothing that we couldn’t reconnect in an emergency, but like the airlock, they all had cameras so that we’d see the shyr if she tried to take one. These precautions turned out to be unnecessary; she entered through the closest airlock, the expected airlock, quickly found that she couldn’t get the inner door open, and looked patiently at the camera and screen we’d set in there for communication purposes.

I was on it, but in the background. Kit took up most of the space. We didn’t know how much of our shared language the shyr knew, so Kit would be translating for me.

“You tried to kill the three most important people in the universe to me,” was the first thing I said to her. “You’re incredibly lucky to be alive.”

“And yet, I am still alive. So you must want something.”

“Maybe. Honestly, I’m still deciding. You might have some utility, but is it worth the risk of keeping you around? That’s the real question.”

“Utility for what?”

“What do you mean, for what? You know what I’ve been contracted to do. I’m trying to decide whether you’ll be any particular use in helping us save the aljik, or whether the risk you pose to my loved ones is too great to bother.”

“You think I’m the major risk here?”

“You did jut try to kill us all with a big gun, so yes.”

“And you stopped me. And here we are. And now you think you’re all safe, I suppose. Tell me this, then: do the crew of the Red Four know what you are?”

I didn’t answer.

“I thought not. Unlike your band of dishonourable traitors who won’t even follow the rules of a Regency fight, that crew are level-headed loyal subjects. I don’t even have to meet them to know that; the fact that they were assigned to a patrol ship is its own proof. The moment they realise that the Earth quarantine is broken, they will leap to the defence of their Empire and the whole galaxy and tear you and your nestmates apart.”

“Is that a threat? Not a great tactical decision to be making threats, in your position.”

“No. An observation. The entire basis of our Empire, and therefore every Empire that arose since, is safety from – ”

“Queen Tatik’s order put them in space in the first place!”

“She had no choice! She had to respond to the rogue Princess’ threat, enlisting you. She was forced into an impossible position; I guarantee that those patrol officers won’t be so reckless.”

“She was ‘forced’ into nothing. She didn’t need to resp – ”

“My Queen?” a timid voice piped up behind me.

“Yes, Lln, what is it?”

“Kate is calling the ship. She wants to talk to you.”

I turned to Kit. Making sure that I was in view of the camera and the shyr could read my gestures, I said to him, “Have our best tahl confine the shyr so I can finish this later. Tell them that they should kill her if she looks at all like she might attack or escape. Every single crew member of any caste is more valuable than her; don’t take risks. I’d rather everybody come through this alive, but if she poses any kind of a threat, eliminate that threat. Make sure everybody who deals with her understands this instruction.”

“Yes, my Queen,” Kit said, not even trying to hide his satisfaction with the order.

I headed off to talk to Kate. Which, since we were already on the bridge, just meant drifting over to the other side of the room. “Hey, Kate. Problem?”

“Nope. I think I might have the answer.”

“Already?”

“Well, I might be wrong. Nobody here seems to know very much, so maybe I’m missing something complicated, but let’s just say I have a very strong theory. I think I know what’s happening to the ahlda.”

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